Tonight I am having dinner with an old friend whom I have known more than 20 years.  I talk to him about I am having a mid-life crisis, try to find my identify and place in the world.  My friend have trouble understanding my problems, not that he thinks I am thinking too much.  He can’t even grasp the concept of mid-life crisis,  since he never think about this questions at all.  He is pretty much living a worry free life all these year.  This friend is also an engineer, but he seems living in a totally different world.  He has been a straight A student in school since the day I know him.  The highest rank I ever have in primary school is the 10th, but my friend always stay in the top 3.  Now he is working for a crowned corperation with 100% job security.  He career path is straight ahead for him.  Since his company havn’t hire engineers for a long time before he join, all engineer above him will soon retire.  He just have to hang in there long enough and eventually he will be the chief engineer leading the whole division.  My jaw drops when he told me his net worth is more than half a million.  I can’t make that much money all my working years combined even I don’t have to spend a dime.  The only thing that trouble him is that he is still single, which something I can’t explain.  He is tall (over 6 feet) and good looking (ok, he does look geeky, but that can be easily fixed).  He has lots of money in the bank and have a job with great persective.  He should be a girl magic, a diamond bacholer.  I am very keen to introduce my single female friend to him.  Sometimes I really envy his simple life, so I don’t have to worry about my mid-life crisis.  On a second thought, if I were in his position, I will probably feel very bored.  Then I would start looking new that will bring me back all the troubling thoughts.

In the early days of computer, software is self contained in its own directory. When you need to upgrade the computer, just copy the directory to the new harddisk and you are back to business right away. Then comes Windows, software is chopped up into bits and pieces and the data is hiddened somewhere inside the registery and application data. That makes moving the directory of the software a nightmare since you have no idea what stuff you need to backup. If you don’t have to adminstrater privilage in the computer, you can’t even install the software since you have no write access to the registery file. It only make software more inconvinient to use. Finally, someone had enough with this stupid idea of registry and port many commonly used opensource software tp a portable version. You just have to download the software package from their website, unzip the files into the directory and you are ready to go. You can copy the files from one hard disk to another and use the software without any problem. It is good to have a copy of your commonly used software stored in a USB drive for carry around and in case of emergency. I can also get around of the installation limitation of the Critix account at work to install Firefox. The portable applications can be downloaded here.

When I was fixing something with a screw driver yesterday, my hand slipped and I have a long but shallow cut on my wrist. Today I show the cut to my friends, joking that I was trying to commit suicide by cutting my wrist. My friend point out at once it can not be a suicide attempt. She reason that when someone try to kill himself, he would have to cut his wrist a few times before he can slide open his artery. Just think about the mental stress and pain one has to go through before killing himself, it would be surprise if he cut it right the first time. I asked how come she know all about this. She said she learn it from watching CSI. In one episode, the police concluded the victim is murdered instead of suicide from a clean wrist cut. Now I know if I want to murder someone and pretend it to be a suicide case. I need to cut the wrist a few more times to make it more real.

I haven’t played badminton for almost a year. I used to play every week some colleagues from Mainland China, but I have to stop due to conflict of schedule with my philosophy class. Last night I have a badminton game with some other friends from work. We went to a really nice badminton center in Richmond. It is modified from a warehouse. It is very large, with more than twenty badminton courts. The lighting is every even and the walls are painted green, so the birdie is easy to see. The court floor us professional non slippery badminton court material, much better than the usual gym wooden floor in community center. Best of all is it only charges $13, only $1 more expensive than renting a court in community center.

I have been playing badminton since high school, but I never have any formal training. My skill cannot improve no matter how often I practice without knowing the right foot movement and the right way of holding the racket. There are group lesson offered in that badminton center, $99 for 8 lessons, not a bag deal. When I sign up for the lesson, the coach gave me a badminton test. We played for 10 minutes, actually I was played by the coach who made me running back and forth to return the birdie. The coach said I am good enough for intermediate lesson, so I pay the tuition fee at once to reserve a spot. Let’s see how much will I improve after 2 months of badminton lessons.